This application relates generally to social networking systems and, in particular, to distributing messages and advertisements to social networking system users based on connections between social networking system users.
Social networks that track and enable connections between users (including people, as well entities such as businesses), have become prevalent in recent years. In particular, a social network system allows users to more efficiently communicate information relevant to other social networking system users to which they are connected. Typically, social networking systems maintain connections among their users and allow express or implied identification of content that is interesting and relevant to individual users. Social networking systems also collect and maintain information about their users. This information may be static, such as geographic location, employer, job type, age, music preferences, interests, and a variety of other attributes, or it may be dynamic, such as tracking a user's actions within the social network.
Users can take advantage of the information maintained in the social networking system. For example, different users may configure presentation of their corresponding user profiles to control how their identity is presented to other social networking system users. User profiles are limiting, however, in that they treat different types of users the same. Specifically, although both persons and entities (such as businesses) are users, each may wish to express their own identities in the social networking system in different ways.
Existing social networking systems delineate between person users and entity users in simplistic ways. For example, conventional social networking systems may have different designs for user profiles for persons vs. entities. Hence, current social networking systems do not leverage connections between persons and entities in a meaningful way.